Speaker
Description
The origin of dark matter and the baryon asymmetry remains one of the central open problems in fundamental physics. Recent work has shown that lepton-flavored dark matter can naturally realize cogenesis of dark matter and baryons via conversion-driven freeze-out, where semi-efficient dark–visible conversions create a departure from equilibrium while thermalization of the dark sector erases any dependence on initial conditions.
In this talk, we extend this mechanism for the first time to quark-philic flavored dark matter, demonstrating that the viable parameter space is significantly enlarged up to the TeV scale. The enhancement arises from the stronger mediator coupling to quarks and the important role played by QCD bound-state formation during freeze-out. We further analyze the impact of finite-temperature corrections to decay and scattering rates, showing how they modify the thermal history and relic abundance across the parameter space. This scenario also predicts striking long-lived particle signatures with soft displaced decay products that remain only partially explored at the LHC and motivate dedicated searches at the HL-LHC.